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BDE Configuration Suggestions
Compiled by Liz Woodhouse

Introduction

Nearly every Paradox user eventually wants to know what to do with those obscure "INIT" settings in the BDE. The following is a compilation of advice from folks on the Paradox newsgroups - take it for what it's worth. (I could not find any explanation on why the recommendations are what they are.)


Random Notes From The Groups

SHAREDMEMLOCATION: I've seen Bertil recommend setting this to 5BDE on Windows 2000 machines. Bertil responded that if one can run two or more instances of Paradox 8/9/10 on a Windows 2000 machine without setting the SHAREDMEMLOCATION to 5BDE, then you can ignore this setting. On Borland's BDE newsgroup, I've seen them recommend setting this to 6BDE under Windows XP (if you are having out of memory problems). (I haven't tested either setting.)

MAXFILEHANDLES: I've seen recommendations to lower the value in this setting. Bertil replies: "I have often recommended to lower MAXFILEHANDLES if you run into problems with files not being released properly, especially after import/export. This was an issue in P5 and maybe early releases of P7.32. I don't know if it valid any longer."

From Rick Kelly: "I changed MEMSIZE to 84 and SHAREDMEMSIZE to 28672 on a 128MB NT4 sp6a workstation running on a Novell 5.1 LAN. All forms, reports, etc running locally and tables on the server and noticed a significant improvement. Several complex forms (P9RT/SP3) involving about 10 tables with 4-6 tcursors loaded in 1 sec vs 5 sec before. All other BDE settings were installation defaults with the exception of MAXFILEHANDLES = 96." (later addition: MINBUFSIZE (2048) and MAXBUFSIZE (8192).)

From Brian Bushay: "I would leave maxfilehandles at its default of 40 Make sure minBuffsize is at least 1 meg. getting MinBuffsize to one meg is the only thing I have found that makes much difference.
MaxBufsize 8-16 meg

Here is general rule of thumb for memsize

1) Take the total amount of RAM on the machine and subtract 16MB for NT or 8MB for Win95.

2) With the remaining amount of RAM, set MEMSIZE to 3/4 of the amount and SHAREDMEMSIZE to 1/4 of the amount.

For example : If you had a 64MB machine running NT you would start with 48MB (64-16) and set :
MEMSIZE = 36 (48 * .75)
SHAREDMEMSIZE = 12288 (48 * .25)"
From J. Eric Taylor:
BDE Administrator Configuration Settings

Use the default settings where the column is blank in this document.

CONFIGURATION TAB

System | Init |
Definition        64 MG         32 MG     128 MG        256 MG      96 MG        80 MG

AUTO ODBC         FALSE
DATA REPOSITORY
DEFAULT DRIVER    PARADOX
LANGDRIVER        ANSI
LOCAL SHARE       TRUE          TRUE      TRUE          TRUE        TRUE         TRUE
LO MEM USE LIMIT  32            32        32            32          32           32
MAXBUFSIZE        16384         8192      32768         65536       24576        20480
MAXFILESHANDLES   100           100       100           100         100          100
MEMSIZE           42            18        90            192         66           54
MINBUFSIZE        4096          4096      4096          4096        4096         4096
MTS POOLING       FALSE
SHAREDMEMLOCATION
SHAREDMEMSIZE     14080         6016      30000         61056       22016        18048
SQLQRYMODE
SYSFLAGS          0
VERSION           4.0
CONFIGURATION TAB

Configuration | Drivers | Native | Paradox
BLOCK SIZE        16384
FILL FACTOR       95
LEVEL             7
CONFIG.SYS Settings for Windows 95/98

Files=100
Buffers=80,0
FCBS=40,4
Stacks=32,512
Break=On
LastDrive=Z


What Liz picked up from these and other sources

Various now out of print books on Paradox support the above recommendations and I could find nothing opposed to them, nor could I find anything which offered significantly more information.


Thanks

Thanks to Bertil Isberg, Rick Kelly, J. Eric Taylor, Stacy Rowley and Robert Harder for replying on the groups and/or sending me information. Thanks to Brian Bushay, Mike Irwin, Richard Davis, Dan Richardson and the authors of Paradox books which discuss configuring the BDE for providing some of the info that was sent to me.


Discussion of this article


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